Expressway project passed to Centre

December 15, 2007

BANGALORE: The Centre may now come to the rescue of state government on the proposed expressway to the international airport. A decision to hand over the project to the National Highways Authority of India to speed it up was taken by

BMRDA, PWD and BBMP officials at a review meeting on Friday.

National Highway 7 (Bellary Road) will be the only road access to the new airport. The access-controlled 21.2-km expressway will not be ready before Dec. 2009.

The state government will send a request to the Union government to fund the project entirely by entrusting it to NHAI. Earlier, the Union government was asked to fund for the project in the form of viability gap funding.

“Objections to the alignment have been invited. A major objection filed by property owners is to denotify their properties. However, public properties have to be acquired for the project. The applications are being scrutinised,” officials who participated in the meeting told The Times of India. Another request to the Centre will be to develop one of the ring roads — STRR, IRR, PRR and to realign, develop NH 207 to connect Bantwal in Mangalore to Tamil Nadu via Kolar which would act as an East-West corridor of the state.

Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com